


Birth (is as safe as life gets)

by merle_p



Category: Brothers & Sisters
Genre: Childbirth, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-28
Updated: 2008-05-28
Packaged: 2017-10-06 18:01:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/56348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merle_p/pseuds/merle_p
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kitty doesn't remember what it is like to be born. And she's resigned herself to the fact that she'll never know what it's like to give birth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Birth (is as safe as life gets)

**Author's Note:**

> Written May 2008.  
> Spoilers for 2.14 – 2.16.  
> Disclaimer: If the show was mine, Tommy would elope with Holly, and Rebecca and Julia would finally get their commitment ceremony. Or something.   
> The title quotes Harriette Hartigan: "Birth is as safe as life gets."  
> This was written for the third round of [](http://community.livejournal.com/smallfandomfest/profile)[**smallfandomfest**](http://community.livejournal.com/smallfandomfest/).

_"When the first baby laughed for the first time, the laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies." (James M. Barrie)_

***

Kitty remembers her mother saying that even before she was born, Sarah already was the model child, well-behaved and brave. The birth went without complications: the mother young, the child healthy – even if it was another time, and Nora still a girl, nervous and scared.

William was pacing in the waiting room, Ida berating him for getting her daughter pregnant, Saul trying to moderate, wringing his hands. William's parents hadn't bothered to come, still not over the disappointment that their eldest son had married a Jewish hippie girl.

Sarah made it easy for them. Didn't struggle when it was time to face the world, gave William the happiest moment of his life, and made Ida forget for a while that she was not happy with the turn of events.

***

They say that unborn children respond to their environment – that everything that happens has an impact on the little soul. Kitty is convinced that it's true, but of course, she still doesn't remember what it was like to be born.

Her father told her once that from the very first, she already had her own mind, butting heads with her mother. William was joking, his tone affectionate, but Kitty knows that Nora almost died when she gave birth to her second daughter. The baby didn't want to go head first, the doctor was late, the midwife young and inexperienced. Mother and child stayed in the hospital for ten days, and Nora told her brother that she never wanted to live through something like that again.

Kitty likes to think that it was this experience that made mother and daughter the way they are: Fighting and yelling, struggling their way through every argument, every crisis; but every time, they re-emerge from the fight stronger, and closer to each other.

***

When Tommy was born, Kitty was two years old and too young to realize what was going on. Sarah says she vaguely remembers missing Mom, remembers Kitty crying and refusing to eat what Grandma had cooked, and that Dad came home at some point, picking her up and twirling her around, overjoyed for some reason she didn't get.

Later, Kitty understood that it was Nora giving birth to a boy what was making him so happy, and it always felt a bit like betrayal when William told the story of Tommy's birth, proud and beaming even twenty years later.

***

The first birth that Kitty actually witnessed was Kevin's. Kevin who as a baby was just as impatient as he's now, and of course just had to do it a bit different than everyone else.

Kitty can still see Nora sitting on the couch in the living room, knitting a mini sweater for little Tommy, the girls playing at her feet. In Kitty's memory, the next hours are a blur – Mom crying, Sarah running for the phone, wetness spreading on Nora's dress and the siren of the ambulance. The doctor who sent them to their room, and that terrible moment when Kitty was sure her mother would die. And then – finally, there was a cry, miserable and defiant, and this little being, wrinkled and tiny, but so alive.

Kevin was so fast that their father only arrived when everything was already over. Sometimes, Kitty thinks that's why Nora somehow always thought of Kevin as hers – William, on the other hand, not so much.

***

Kitty was twelve when Justin was born, and slightly weirded out by the fact that her parents obviously were still having sex. Apparently not often enough, though, to remember the consequences, because Kitty knows for sure that a fifth child was not on her parents' to-do-list.

Dad picked all of them up at school, excited and impatient, and took them to the hospital, just to rush off and leave them in the waiting room. Kitty remembers working through half of her RE school book as the hours passed, trying hard not to think too closely about what happened behind the closed door. She remembers Sarah thumbing through old issues of _Vanity Fair_, Kevin curled up at her side and reading along over her shoulder, Tommy throwing both of them disdainful looks over the rim of his comic book.

By the time their father came to fetch them, she had fallen asleep over her homework, and in her state of drowsiness, it felt surreal, like a dream, when they watched through the glass pane how the nurse put their new little brother to bed.

***

Kitty doesn't remember what it's like to be born. And she's resigned herself to the fact that she'll never know what it's like to give birth.

When it's time to go to the hospital, she's not in pain – not dripping liquids on Kevin's expensive car seats because her water broke while she was having lunch with him in his office. Instead, she holds tightly onto the papers he made her sign months ago, feeling sweaty and overdressed in her pink blouse and the skirt, while Robert drives without breaking any traffic laws, without running the red lights.

She didn't read _What to expect_ or the _Mayo Clinic Guide to a Healthy Pregnancy_. She didn't drink ginger tea, didn't do breathing exercises. There are no stretch marks, no new bras. Instead, there's an ultrasonic scan on her night stand, and gender neutral baby clothes in the closet, and a copy of _Juno_ on her laptop.

It's not her own family in the waiting room. The guy who's pacing is Linda's boyfriend, a skinny boy in an UCLA sweater and glasses, and Linda's mother offers peanut butter cookies to everyone, just to distract herself. It's Linda who's having a baby, and it might be Kitty's baby, the baby they're going to take home, but she still can't help feeling left out.

***

When Kitty was little, her mother told her a story: When the first baby laughed for the first time, Nora used to say, the baby's laugh broke and fell to countless tiny bits, and those pieces bounced and buzzed around, and that's how the fairies came into being. And Kitty remembers wanting to hear the story again and again, until she was too old to believe.

Sometimes, she sees a pregnant woman and feels so bitter, feels cheated out of nine precious months she should have spent with her daughter.  
Sometimes, she sees Tommy looking at his brothers and wondering which one of them is the father of his child.   
Sometimes, she catches Scotty watching her baby with longing, and hiding his eyes as soon as Kevin walks in.  
Sometimes, she watches Rebecca taking out her cell phone, dialing Holly's number, and switching it off before the call connects.

Sometimes, she sees her daughter, giggling, mouth wide in a toothless smile, reaching for her with chubby hands, and she thinks that maybe it's time to believe in fairies again.


End file.
